


'And how tonight we will turn in'

by Mireille



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-24
Updated: 2006-11-24
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13554732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: The members of Torchwood Three don't sleep much.





	'And how tonight we will turn in'

**Author's Note:**

> Written for mosca's free verse challenge in 2006. My snippet was _And how tonight we will turn in / all at once and then toss off in unison / the thickest of blankets from our beds / as those ghosts we tried speaking for / sit in on our dreams once again._ In the spirit of the challenge, I didn't look it up until I was finished with the story, but it comes from "Night Light," by Mark DeCarteret.
> 
> There are references to canonical pairings in this, but it's not a romance/relationship fic at all. 
> 
> This was written following "Small Worlds" and therefore only promises canon compliance up through that episode.

The box under Jack's bunk is locked with technology that won't be invented on this planet until the forty-third century. He found it in a horse-pasture after he and Torchwood Two--he could look up the files and find the man's name, but Jack has a certain respect for people who want to keep their own secrets--scavenged and then destroyed the remnants of a ship that crashed light-years off course. 

The box contains blurred and grainy photographs of the fairies at the bottom of the garden; a newspaper clipping from the list of those presumed dead after Canary Wharf; and a key that unlocks no door made on Earth. 

He's carried the key through three centuries, or at least parts of them; he's carried it on six continents; he's carried it through, at last count, seven wars. Last Christmas, he let himself believe that he might find the door it fits again, and he stopped carrying it with him. Hope is a luxury for the young, and Jack is so very old now. 

The box under Jack's bunk contains all the reasons he doesn't sleep much, these days. 

Maybe he should move the box and see if that helps.

***

Lately, Owen hasn't been able to sleep at night. He's been dreaming of Ed Morgan: dreaming he killed Morgan, dreaming he _is_ Morgan. Dreaming it was him Morgan cornered on a dark and rainy night, and in his dreams, he doesn't even get the oblivion of death at the end.

It doesn't take a doctorate to make the connection, to understand why Morgan got to him when he's seen things equally depraved and soulless a hundred times since he started working for Jack Harkness, and they've never cost him a moment's peace. 

Owen's started wondering if the others are going to make that same connection. If they'll poke through his confidential files--he doubts Gwen could get to them, but the others would only need thirty seconds alone with the computer--and look for reasons. Sister, lover, mother; childhood abuse or dark alley; all researched and rejected before coming to the one remaining conclusion: that Ed Morgan looked into Owen's eyes and saw himself reflected back. 

He wonders if they'd turn away from him in disgust. It's possible, he thinks, that they wouldn't even blink, and he's not sure which would trouble him more. 

He starts drinking himself to sleep.

***

Two minutes; that's all Toshiko needs. Or at least, it's all she could have, and she'd take it. Two minutes is long enough to ask a lot of questions, if you don't waste time. None of this "Did you see who killed you?" or "What's it like to be dead?" and no standing around wondering what to say next; Toshiko has her questions planned out in her mind.

They all start with _How could you--_ and _Why did you--_ and _Did you ever think about--_ , and if she could just get the answers, she thinks, she'd be able to put all this behind her. She wouldn't have to wonder if there was something she could have done to stop this. Wouldn’t lie awake at night questioning herself, trying to find assurances that in Suzie's place, she would never have even considered doing the same. 

But she doesn't have the glove, and she doesn't have Suzie to ask; what she has, every time she closes her eyes, is two minutes. 

And the answers Suzie's corpse gives her in her dreams makes Toshiko grateful she'll never have to hear them for real, in case they're prophecy and not nightmare.

***

Ianto never cancelled the hall they'd booked for the wedding; even if their friends and family, what few of them were left after they lost Torchwood One, thought the bride was dead, he wanted Lisa to know that he hadn't given up hope. That he would never give up hope.

He knows that if he told the manager the truth, or some reasonable variant of it--a fiancée lost at Canary Wharf, a desperate belief that she was only missing and not gone forever, the final crushing of his hopes--he'd get the deposit back. He doesn't need the money; he doesn't have time to spend it anyway. 

He'd like the words, though, the stiff and ritualized response to grief: _I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Jones._ He'd like someone, anyone, to say them, whether they were sincere or merely something to break the silence. 

Instead, the others watch him out of the corners of their eyes, and Ianto can almost hear them wondering what else he's hiding from them. Wondering whether, in his place, they might have done the same thing. 

In the end, he sends a terse e-mail to the booking manager, and never reads the reply.

***

Rhys bought her roses, a dozen of them; long-stemmed and red as blood. Gwen puts her arms around him, enjoying the pure solid comfort of being in his arms and breathing in his aftershave; she doesn't let herself think about lies and secrets and cramped dark spaces when you believe you're going to die.

Rhys is a good man, a kind man, a gentle man, and he is sincerely proud of her. She never wants to lose that, because she's already started to wonder if she'll ever be able to be proud of _herself_ again. 

That night she sleeps with her head pillowed on his chest, and in her nightmares, it's Rhys lying on the grass, drowning on a clear night, eyes sightless and terrified, while all around them, rose petals flutter to the ground. She wakes with the feeling that she's choking, and goes out to the kitchen for a glass of water. 

Two perfect petals have fallen from the bouquet; Gwen bites her lip to keep from screaming. 

The next morning, when Rhys asks her why the broken vase and battered flowers are in the dustbin, the lie about a sudden gust of wind comes all too easily.

***

Torchwood Three works late into the night, even when there's no crisis. There's always data to be analyzed or tests to be run or even filing to be done, and they rarely look at the others, taking in the shadows under their eyes or the weary slump of their shoulders, and suggest that they go and get some sleep.

None of them likes sleeping very much, these days.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
